


Aural

by verushka70



Category: V for Vendetta
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 20:05:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2520134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verushka70/pseuds/verushka70
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Into V’s melodious world – where he navigated with his eyes closed, where he knew every normal sound the Shadow Gallery made day or night  – the young Evey Hammond entered. And Evey made noise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aural

**Author's Note:**

> Not sexual so much as sensual. Originally posted Jan. 26th, 2007 at my LJ.
> 
> My first (and only) VfV fic. I am **extremely grateful** to [blucrowlaughing](http://blucrowlaughing.livejournal.com/) for beta-ing.

The physiological enhancements V had developed as a result of Dr. Stanton’s experiments could be a blessing or a curse – at times both. Those that were helpful, he used in service of his work. Those that were not, he did his best to ignore or handled with as little disturbance to his equilibrium as possible. As unnaturally attuned as his receptive senses were, V had of necessity developed the ability to “tune out.”  


Though he had accepted the erasure of self and personal history at Larkhill, periodically a scent would touch off a vivid memory with little or only vague visual association. When such a piece of the puzzle that was himself skittered across his awareness, V accepted it with equanimity, and let it sink back to the depths from whence the scent had drawn it. At any rate, astute olfactory abilities made cooking a pleasure, and a finely discriminating sense of taste enhanced his enjoyment of the foodstuffs he liberated from Chancellor Sutler’s supply trains. 

His cat-like ability to see in near-total darkness was in no way a curse, of course; it was his only anomalous ability that was pure blessing. In his every endeavour, he had that advantage. 

The sharpness of his hearing extended from the squeaking of vermin in the dirt beneath the Shadow Gallery (and, unfortunately, in some of the walls) to the chaotic, dissonant noises of the outside world. So many people watching telly at once and rarely ever anything good thanks to the Ministry of Objectionable Material. Yet it was also reason to savor the sublime: the leit-motifs, the compositions, the melodies, the harmonies, the major and minor keys… Symphony, opera, jazz, blues, rock ‘n roll, pop music, drinking songs, and even lullabies all had a place among V’s eight hundred and seventy two jukebox selections. He enjoyed a greater response to aural stimulation than any normal human could imagine. Luckily, working mainly by night was the time of day least likely to be cacophonous. However, some activities required a day schedule, and there you had it: reason to hone his ability to tune out superfluous sensory data. 

His kinesthesia and proprioception were incomparable: top of the line for any predator, especially given his penchant for hand-to-hand combat, at night, in the dark, with blades. The surge of strength, grace and agility he experienced during those skirmishes was the joy of the expert dancer, the satisfaction of the successful hunter, the surety of the cat that always lands on his feet.

As all gifts do, they came with a price. The price was the damage he had suffered in bringing about the destruction of Larkhill. Not soon enough. Not in time to save Valerie. Nor to prevent St. Mary’s. But at least he had ended the torture and the experiments there.

Despite the overdevelopment of sight, smell, taste, hearing, motion, and balance, V was, by contrast, deficient in the sensation of touch wherever he’d been burned – which was nearly everywhere. Whatever Stanton’s work had done to enhance some abilities, it had not enhanced his capacity to repair damage at the cellular or mitochondrial level. 

Partial-thickness burns –first and second degree burns – were agonizing as they healed. But V had suffered mostly full-thickness burns – painless because the nerves were completely destroyed. Sensations of pain on much of the surface of his skin no longer occurred, although he could feel the pain of pulled muscles or the tightness of stiff scar tissue across swollen injuries – injuries that rarely occurred, due to his enhanced abilities. Most of his superficial nerve endings remained numb after the burns healed into stable scar tissue. It was the deeper pain receptors which still worked properly.Again, one had to take the bad with the good. The scar tissue literally gave him thicker skin. And despite the aesthetics of its appearance, lack of pain sensation at the surface of his skin was a great advantage in fighting. 

Since nothing could ever be as bad as Larkhill, and there was nothing to be done about any of it, V accepted it stoically. He knew he would always need emollients to keep the scar tissue flexible across large and small joints. Wearing the gloves was no great sacrifice. They gave him a better grip on things and completed an intentionally imposing disguise.

Then there was that… yes, _that_. He wasn’t a young man anymore, but he wasn’t a dead man. His body continued to respond to the usual stimuli: full bladder, REM sleep, the slight rise in hormone levels every twenty-four hours …not to mention all the erotic art and literature he’d reclaimed from the Ministry of Objectionable Material. 

Most men would welcome erections, V knew – at least if they occurred at a time and place suitable for solitary or mutual pleasures. For him they were a delicate commingling of the pleasure of arousal and engorgement with the sting of inflexible scar tissue tightening and tautening over flesh swollen by the infusion and entrapment of blood. V continued to collect erotica, but he did not often indulge in it. He had too much to do, anyway.

What would have been purely onanistic under other circumstances became a very real and practical need to keep the skin pliant. On planned occasions once a week (sometimes two or three, if the erotica called to him), V maintained his scars’ flexibility with a good handful or two of emollient and a rather long session of rubbing it in – extra time required by the blunting of sensation. He had learned from experience that not using enough lotion left him chafed and still more vulnerable to pain and potential injury. He would have ignored it if he could, but he had tried that.It merely became more frequent, insistent, and uncomfortable. Ignored long enough, he dreamt disturbingly sensual dreams from which he awakened to find he needed to change his sheets. 

So V settled on the best solution to a minor but tenacious difficulty. Usually after much self-manipulation, sensations finally penetrated enough to bring him to completion. Not infrequently, his arousal faded before culmination became inevitable and irresistible and V stopped with a mixture of disappointment and relief. 

Into this world, the young Evey Hammond entered. Into V’s melodious, fascinating world of objects, art, music, and books – where he could navigate with his eyes closed, where he knew every normal sound that the Shadow Gallery made, day or night. 

And Evey made noise.

Not a lot of noise, of course. No more than any young woman, V supposed – and probably considerably less than most.

But her heartbeat. It was audible, quite often.

He had gotten quite used to living alone.

And her leg jiggling whilst reading a book.

Her presence in his home was—both delightful and disturbing. It interrupted his routines.

The sibilant swish of her silky strands of hair as they wound ‘round each other and then ‘round a finger when she twirled a lock of hair, often while she read. She did not know he could hear it, let alone that it made him gaze at her.

V had an awful lot of books.

Evey did a lot of reading.

Her humming. Whilst cleaning. Whilst cooking. Whilst bathing.

Initially, adorable; eventually, distracting. He was used to the sounds of the Shadow Gallery, but not to the sounds of a very young woman living there.

Her breathing; quiet and almost inaudible while deeply asleep, more harsh while trying to move furniture or stacks of books or removing years of dust from various objects or pieces of furniture.

V could even tell when she was biting her lip… just by hearing it.

With the iron control he had honed for twenty years of tuning out distractions, he tuned Evey’s little noises out. 

Inevitably, there came a time when even V’s steely resolve weakened. He sat in front of his console, checking the monitors via which he tapped into the Eyes and Ears.

He’d heard the water running; heard her readying for her bath; heard her humming.

V heard her get in the tub.

He twirled dials and pushed faders and concentrated on the hum of the electronics, on the conversations, on the visuals coming from the different cameras.

V heard Evey making tiny little splashes as she lay back in the tub and then began to wash up. Even that could be ignored. These things he had heard from Evey Hammond before.

What attracted his attention that night was the change in her breathing. The little ripples in the water – not even splashes – where her upper arm jiggled _just so_.The quickening of her breath. The tiniest of vocalizations on the exhale of her still-quickening breathing. Almost wheezing, it seemed, but more volitional than that.

What _was_ she doing?

V’s focus on the surveillance equipment slipped as he became more perturbed by the sounds Evey made.

She was not quite splashing, but her upper arm was making some kind of repetitive, rhythmic, small and circumscribed motion in the water. It seemed to be a motion carried to her upper arm (and therefore through ripples on the surface of the water) by finer motions of her fingers.

There was something so curiously familiar about the sound, and yet V could not recall ever hearing it before.

Her breathing became panting. A most unusual kind of panting.

He stood bolt upright, and then stock still, listening intently. V felt himself slowly engorge and tighten.

Evey’s panting became stifled moaning through clenched teeth.

He felt the swell and throb of his organ, exquisitely intertwined with the pain of his stretching scar tissue.

It dawned on him exactly what she was doing in the bath just as she keened quietly, a last little whimper of a wail. It touched off a ghostly memory somewhere in his head of the particularly adolescent need for privacy only met during bath time.

His arousal bloomed still farther, a throbbing fist of velvet petals and thorns.

She still panted, but with a small splash and little ripples, it sounded as if she had slumped down in the water. Evey caught her breath, and as she did so, her breathing slowed.

All the while V stood still listening, not hearing the tapped Ears, not seeing the sights from the Eye’s cameras. 

She started humming again. The louder splashing of washing began again.

Eyes closed behind his mask, V pictured Evey in her bath: sensually and slowly caressing herself, rhythm hastening as her arousal grew. The soundtrack was all that he’d heard: little ripples of water, moist breath panted from her fine nostrils and through her clenched teeth, the stifling of authentic vocalization to ensure the privacy of her pleasure.

The vision of Evey in his head was at odds with her cheery, aimless humming and more animated splashing, now.

V rested his gloved hands on the console, tilted his head down, leaned forward, and took a deep breath. 

The smoldering smart of his excitation subsided; the throbs dwindled as his arousal drained away.

Composing himself with another deep breath, he sat down to review his taps in the Ears and Eyes… and ruthlessly tuned out the thankfully more mundane sounds the vexing and vibrant Evey now visited upon his vulnerable aural apparatus.

 

 

[author's notes](http://verushka70.livejournal.com/25027.html)  



End file.
